Zoe Keating

The house lights dim in the concert hall and the crowd falls silent. Zoe Keating enters onto stage, cello in hand, exposed to the black void of the faceless crowd. The silence grips her like first frost. She shakes uncontrollably and can't breathe, the powerful stage fright takes hold and her bow falls from her hand onto the hardwood stage. 

Zoe has been playing cello since she was eight years old. She has played for numerous bands and soundtracks, but to me she's not just a cellist. Zoe plays her Cello differently. She uses looping software to duplicate herself so she can create different layers of sound and rhythm. She doesn't just play the cello, she's tamed it like a wild animal. She taps it and rubs it as a percussion instrument, she detunes it to make it sound demented and she beats her hand at just the right spot to get a bassy heartbeat out of it.  

She's got over her stage fright of her early years, but her attitude remains somewhat timid and humble. 

Cécile Corbel

Arrietty is about 14 years old. She's strong and adventurous girl with a taste for exploration and a desire for friendship. She's also 4 inches tall.


Studio Ghibli's latest adventure shrinks the viewer down to Arrietty's size so we can see the world from the perspective of her and her parents. They illustrate vibrant forests of grass and flowers and the dark hostile plains of a vacant kitchen floor at night. The attention to detail in this film is both intense and imaginative, animators draw water droplets the scale of Arriety's fist pouring out of teapots made for a dollhouse, and into cups filled by a single droplet. A bayleaf provides her mother with a year's worth of tea.


The film tells a beautiful story about a sick and lonely boy discovering Arrietty and her family, and follows the story as this dangerous and risky  situation slowly ends up helping both parties. 


Imagine the the tick tock of a fifty story high grandfather clock, or the drip drop of a leaky faucet into a giant pot of water. Those are the little touches that make this adventure so immersive.


As we jump across ivy leaves and run across window sills the enchanting sounds of Cecile Corbel's harp accompany us. Cecil can sing in over 7 different languages including; English, Italian, Breton, French, Irish, Turkish, and Japanese. Her music honors of the film and images perfectly. 


Cecile Corbel - Sho's Waltz ( for the film "The Secret World of Arrietty")

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pssst. I want you to hear something...

Childish Gambino - Heartbeat (Oliver Remix) by weareoliver

Stuart Price

Some producers hold a special place in my heart. A place with warm weather, fluffy clouds, green grass, butterflies, and cotton candy bunnies. This realm is occupied by only a few things in my life; dark chocolate, the smell of a pine tree, burning leaves in the fall, the scent of chlorine and sunscreen on a summer day and of course...

Stuart Price...or if you prefer... Les Rythmes Digitales, Paper faces, Zoot Woman, Thin white Duke, Man with Guitar or Jacques Lu Cont

Can one man juggle so many alter ego's and still be successful? 3 grammy's later, That's a yes. For this post I'm going to neglect the fact that grammy's are far from a reliable measure for success.

Anyway, Mr. Price is a fantastic producer of pop music, dusted slightly with a dance club

aesthetic. I've been waiting a long time to hear more work from his 1999 french touch project, "Les Rythmes Digitales", and it seems the wait is over.

He has confirmed a new album late this year, and so far released 2 great tracks as a taste of things to come.